Gait Analysis

It's been a pretty big training week. This weekend we did swimmimg time trials followed by bike time trials on the velodrome. Then this morning (Sunday), Elaine and I had a Gait Analysis session provided for free through the Triathlon Club. The gait analysis expert (Kevin) is from the Australian Institute of Sport and has tested a lot of Australia's top athletes (what a come down testing us).

The Gait Analysis involved us being videod doing 3 short runs (about 20m long). One running towards the camera and two running away with the camera focusing on different sections of the body for the two different away runs. Elaine needs to strengthen her core muscles because the video shows her hips collapsing a little after landing. My hips are good thanks to all the core strength work I did before Ironman, but I have other issues. Most obviously my feet splay outwards (far more than I realised) and I have a weakness in my Vastus Lateralis (outer quad). It's not so much that my Vastus Lateralis is weak, it is more that my Vastus Medialis Oblique (VMO or inner quad) is overly strong due to all my cycling. So I now have an extra set of squats to do with my foot turned in to strengthen the Vastus Lateralis. Apparrently the splayed feet are not a big issue, but they look terrible, whereas I cannot even detect the Vastus Lateralis problem. Follow this link to one of the gait analysis videos

I did 2 x 700m swimming Time Trials (TTs) in 13m10s and 12m50s. Not great times, but I'm very happy to be swimming this well so early in the season. Plus I clocked up 7.6km of swimming for the week, biggest swim week of the season so far.

The bike time trials consisted of three 16 minute time trials where I averaged 40.4kph, 40.9kph & 40.4kph. I would usually be happy with these results, but considering that the only ride I've done in the last 3 weeks has been a 30 minute windtrainer session - I'm extremely happy. I usually do all my time trials with training wheels, but I've been lazy and left my ZIPP 808s on since Ironman, so it is a little difficult to compare with past results (the ZIPP 808 race wheels are very fast). Unfortunately I've currently got the Power Meter on my road bike, so I cannot compare power files either. The only downside to come out of the ride is that I again suffered bad saddle sores (I don't have this problem on my road bike). Riding for 90 minutes should not result in saddle sores, so I definitely need to start exploring other seat options. I'm hoping to trial an ISM Adamo or Cobb saddle.

Today's run mileage was 15km, consisting of a 3km warmup run before the Gait Analysis and then a 12km long run this afternoon. This brings my weekly mileage up to just over 32km (equal highest for the season).